


Water Fountain

by jarynw02



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alive Kushina, Alive Minato, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Female Uzumaki Naruto, Found Family, Hatake Kakashi is a Troll, I JUST WANT NARUTO AND MINATO TO HAVE SOME TIME TOGETHER YOU KNOW, Kakashi is a little shit lets be honest, Kushina is a fucking hurricane, Minato is Anxious, Minato is a Mother Hen, More self indulgent family bullshit from me, Obito is such a good friend oh my god, Saving Obito, Team Minato-centric, Time Travel, fem!naruto, rin is precious lets make her more important
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27253915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jarynw02/pseuds/jarynw02
Summary: At first, Naru ignores the metallic slicing sounds of battle, the too quick and too quiet footsteps skating through the trees. She’s safely lingering on a branch of her own, picking out flecks of dried blood from under her nails with a kunai she’d recovered from her last opportunity to insert herself in the war.The war that is definitely not her own, but one from long before her birth that she has no real business being a part of. She also has no business being in a child’s body, but what can she do at this point?You’ve got bigger fish to fry than these Stone assholes.Rolling her eyes, she moves onto her ring finger. “Yeah, yeah,” she whispers, so quiet there’s barely a breath between her lips. “I get it, Kurama. We’re still saving the world, I know.”ORFem!Naruto time travel trash where she saves Obito and Team Minato becomes obsessed with taking care of their Sensei's new little sister.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Uzumaki Naruko, Hatake Kakashi/Uzumaki Naruto, Namikaze Minato/Uzumaki Kushina, Nohara Rin/Uchiha Obito
Comments: 43
Kudos: 597





	Water Fountain

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone's reading all my shitposting WIPs the common theme is def my daddy issues projected onto a fem!naruto but i mean if you've been reading them all then maybe we have something in common, ne? NEW FRIENDS, lmfao
> 
> part four of shit posting all my WIPS I've kept hidden... this one actually flowed really well when I was writing it, to the point that I wrote it all in one sitting and had no idea I'd written this much.

At first, Naru ignores the metallic slicing sounds of battle, the too quick and too quiet footsteps skating through the trees. She’s safely lingering on a branch of her own, picking out flecks of dried blood from under her nails with a kunai she’d recovered from her last opportunity to insert herself in the war. 

The war that is definitely not her own, but one from long before her birth that she has no real business being a part of. She also has no business being in a child’s body, but what can she do at this point? 

_ You’ve got bigger fish to fry than these Stone assholes. _

Rolling her eyes, she moves onto her ring finger. “Yeah, yeah,” she whispers, so quiet there’s barely a breath between her lips. “I get it, Kurama. We’re still saving the world, I know.”

A few weeks in a younger version of yourself’s body and you get used to it, sort of. Being in the past… is also a change, but Naru is taking it in stride. She’s got an internal checklist of people to kill or otherwise impact: various Akatsuki members, Danzo, Obito, Madara, even Gaara… though he’s not born yet, is he? 

She’s figuring it out as she goes. 

Voices pick up in the distance and her kunai pauses for a heartbeat, but she doesn’t recognize the one  _ yelling  _ \- because starting a screaming match in the middle of a war is a fantastic idea - so she starts to switch hands, grateful for her time spent aiming to be ambidextrous, even if she’s still falling a little short. But then there’s a second voice. 

One she vaguely  _ does  _ recognize. 

Curiosity piqued, she flips her hold on her kunai and shifts through the trees, well above any shinobi movement below. Her tattered clothes hang off her in leaps like flight, her only opportunity to wash them long gone about a week ago while her rough, blood-ridden hair bounces off her back in its thick braid she’d finally settled on to minimize the exposure to her new environment. 

The voices clash again and she lets herself fall to a lower limb on her next jump, people finally visible through the scattering of leaves ahead. Silver hair catches her attention and she falters, eyes wide. And she pays for that misstep almost instantly when her senses flare to incoming shinobi. She whirls, kunai at the ready as fully grown Iwa nin pop out of the trees. They swing for her in a sloppy formation, but if there’s one thing she’s learned amidst her new, bizarre time travelling life, it’s that her skills are not as hampered by her body swap as she would have imagined. 

And, since she’s now tiny as hell again, she’s also fast as shit. 

She darts between them, taking full advantage of the closer ninjas kunai swing to sweep up under his guard and stab him once with her own blade straight through the ribs and into his heart. In the same movement, she retracts her weapon and spins, dropping down to pin the next ninjas foot to the tree, her kunai stabbing all the way through, but she pounces up in the same breath, keeping tight hold on her blade to slice it over his throat and prevent his scream. 

Allowing herself the smallest moment, she looks back at the familiar streak of silver hair to eye his companion. If that’s who she thinks it is and they’re where she thinks they are… 

Iwa nin close in on her in a crowd and pull her attention away from the boys down below. They approach her with a mixture of fury and twisted glee, but she can’t really blame them seeing as a little kid just virtually assassinated their grown male comrades, so she lets it slide, a grin of her own slowly growing across her blood spattered cheeks. 

Something about having the upper hand on the enemy when she looks like a child is very strangely satisfying. 

So when they give in to the urge and pounce, she’s ready, sneaking and slashing and stabbing in a riotous match full of quick turns and leaps that leverage her size and mobility and, though it takes longer than she wants, eventually they’re all down in gorey heaps of flesh. Without sticking around, she races for the spot the two boys left behind, wary of the fact that more shinobi are likely nearby. She lowers her chakra signature while tentatively reaching out her senses to follow their trail, hoping she’s not too late. 

She’s not totally sure what she’s looking for. The story of this event was just that, a story. All she knows is that there was a collapse and then…

There!

The shallow wound on her side stings as a pulse of Kurama’s chakra warms over it and she silently thanks him as she closes in on the collapsed cave ahead. The boulders are massive, the glimpses of space between them barely large enough for her to slip inside, but she does. A faint gurgling hiss of breath reaches her in the cramped space between rocks as she wiggles down to the lowest point until her feet touch something solid. When she finally lays eyes on him, she’s not sure whether she’s relieved or mortified. 

Sure enough, just like in the story, Obito is half crushed to death and missing an eye, bleeding out all alone. 

_ You could just kill him. Make sure he’s too far gone for Madara to use.  _

A frown tugs at her lips. She knows Kurama is right, but when she sees Obito like this… all she can think of is Kakashi-sensei standing before the Memorial Stone. It would be smart to just end it now, it would mark a name off her list of things and people to change in this second chance at saving the world. 

But… 

She can’t just let an innocent boy die. 

Her knowledge of both doton techniques and medical ninjutsu are minimal at best, but still, she knows enough to perform a few hand signs and build a miniature wall that scrapes over the top of Obito’s unconscious body and pushes back the massive boulder pinning him down. 

_ Kurama, can you do something… I don’t-- I don’t know enough to fix this and what if… what if Madara is coming soon? We need to get out of here. _

A brief sneer echoes through her mind.  _ I’m not a healer, brat. And I’m not healing an Uchiha.  _

“But this is one of Kakashi-sensei’s precious people,” she whispers, emotion coating her voice more than she expected and the heaviness inside her mind tumults in a conflict that she’s familiar with. Kurama is thinking. 

_ Fine _ .  _ You remember how to lend my chakra. I’ll give it. _

Without wasting a second, she places her hands on his chest and summons the linked chakra she shares with Kurama. He guides it out of her touch, covering the boy in a menacing red glow. She spreads her senses out while she watches the mangled remains of half his body slowly pull together, haphazardly at first, but eventually knitting into recognizable limbs. The closest presence she can feel is far away, and a group of ninjas, but the new information does little to soothe her worries over Madara’s impending presence. Madara catching her right now is the  _ last  _ thing they need. 

_ He’s in one piece. We can move. Hold on to him and I’ll keep working. _

She nods her head, even though Kurama doesn’t need the visible affirmative, and reaches for Obito’s unconscious body, ignoring the obscene amount of blood to drag him up to her. Her small doton jutsu gave them a little more room, but to completely free them she has to press him against herself, hugging him to her chest as she maneuvers with her legs to climb their way out. Her back burns with scrapes against the rock as they go, but the surface isn’t too far and Kurama will be there to clean up every scratch when he’s done with Obito. 

He’s dead weight in her arms when she climbs free, but the very real threat of Madara’s appearance is too great for her to stop and adjust her hold for now. She takes to the trees, desperately pushing her own chakra into her legs and ignoring Kurama’s that is still steadily working on the unconscious Uchiha. Her senses stretch as far as she can make them, desperately hoping for  _ someone  _ familiar to come into range so she can at least know which direction she should be going in. No matter her experience as a ninja, her sense of direction has always been a little lacking and if it’s up to her, she’ll be delivering Obito directly to the Konoha front gates. 

Kakashi and his team were nearby not long ago, but if her guess is correct, then her father likely swooped in and hiraishin’d them back to the village. 

Between herself and Kurama, they’re stable on their chakra spending for hours. She keeps them from running into any other chakra presences that she doesn’t recognize, namely, all of them, and by the time dusk is closing in on them, she’s looking for shelter. Without a better option in sight, she settles Obito down on a high branch of a tree and pops two shadow clones into existence to find some kind of food or water and set traps and the handful of seals she’s managed to learn. Sitting down behind his head, she looks down at the boy who used to be on Kakashi’s team, her  _ father’s  _ team, and traces her fingers over the slowly mending skin of his cheek. 

_ Can you save his eye?  _ she thinks to Kurama. 

The red glow of chakra has thinned over their cross country run, but it’s still present and intensifies with her gentle touch to his face. 

_ I don’t know. Sharingan is complicated, but the eye itself will restore the same way the rest of him will.  _

She nods idly, taking in the changes since she fetched him from beneath the boulder. His chest has evened out, his limbs a little lumpy but all in one piece, and his skin is all sewing back together from the mauled flesh it was. 

_ At least now we know exactly “when” we are,  _ she thinks.  _ So we can plan out a little more.  _

Kurama scoffs through her mind, a low, reverberating sound.  _ The plan we have now is fine. The Yondaime’s presence changes nothing.  _

_ I think we should have allies,  _ she tells Kurama, already predicting his response and bracing herself. 

_ Allies?! We don’t need allies! We can do-- _

_ Like we did last time?  _ She leans back, letting her hand fall away from Obito as her head touches on the trunk of the tree.  _ I know that we’re trying to be preemptive here, but we never would have made it as far as we did before without allies.  _

Kurama snarls, but is quiet for a moment. Then,  _ So, what? You want to march up to Konoha and declare yourself a time traveller? Ridiculous.  _

_ No!  _ She bites her lip, feeling to poof of her clone’s memories returning to her after setting their perimeter.  _ I’ll figure something out. Just like I always have. Trust me. _

_ Stupid girl.  _

_ Stupid fox. _

Her second clone returns with an assortment of nuts, but no water, which is unfortunate. She eats them quietly once the clone has been dismissed, pondering. Iwa is definitely somewhere behind them, along with the Land of Grass where they were, but whether she’s actually heading toward Konoha or not, she doesn’t know. That said, in theory, she should be able to sense the mass amount of chakra signatures when they come close enough and if she can gain Kurama’s help, her sensing range should be great enough that there’s no way they’ll be lost in Fire Country for too long. 

So, hopefully, they’ll be able to make it to Konoha before nightfall tomorrow. 

When she starts to drift to sleep a few hours later, a pulse of Kurama’s chakra reminds her that he’s there and with that assurance, she lets herself slip into rest for a little while. 

It’s still dark when she wakes and she’s grateful she didn’t overdo it. Obito is still passed out in front of her, a thin film of Kurama’s bijuu chakra still holding on around him, and she reaches for his shoulders, tugging on that line of chakra until he’s covered once more. As pragmatically as possible, she loads him onto her back, tucking her arms beneath his legs to keep him in position, and takes off without bothering to touch the traps she’s left behind. 

Kurama reminds her which direction to go in and she’s grateful for his presence for the umpteenth time. Senses spread and calculating, they dart through the trees, keeping a fair distance from any other people, shinobi or otherwise, and after three detours and no stops the sun is setting and the flickering mass of chakra that she  _ prays  _ is Konoha is up ahead. She mutes her senses until they’re a little more average, waiting for them to near a typical range for a sensor before going in search of a cave for a more long term campsite. 

A cave fulfills her need and once it’s been scouted via shadow clones, she takes up temporary residence inside, sending the clones away to forage for food and water-- especially water. Obito is still unconscious the next day, when food has been found and she’s already drunk an entire canteen of water, setting one aside for him just in case. They’ve been mercifully lucky that no others have come within her senses around the cave and all she can do is hope for one more day of safety to buy them time for a believable trip from Grass Country. 

Kurama retracts his chakra from Obito by midday saying there’s nothing more he can do and it’s partway through the night when the boy finally stirs. Naru nearly jumps out of her skin when his hand starts wandering on the gritty cave floor before he reaches up to his face, touching the spot where his eye is missing-- given to Kakashi. 

He opens his mouth and nothing but rasp comes out. 

“Here,” she says quietly, bringing a canteen to his hand and trying to help him sit up enough to drink. He stiffens immediately, a groan rolling through him that he bites back. “No, no, it’s okay,” she says, trying to sound soothing. “You’re okay. I found you. It’s okay.”

After a few desperate gulps, Obito pushes the water away and shakily forces himself into an upright position with Naru’s hands hovering around him. He blinks the one eye he has left and Naru’s silent question is answered when he finally focuses on her. 

“Who are you?” he says into the darkness. 

Suddenly, she’s glad that she’s in this weird, small body. Knowing that she probably looks like a lost, helpless child is enough to set her new plans into stone. 

She chews on her lips, casting nervous glances around the cave. “My name is Naru. I was looking for a place to sleep and found you here.”

He’s quiet for a long time and she imagines what might be going through his head: the boulder collapse, where his team is, where he is now, how he’s mostly  _ okay _ , and possibly even what’s going on in the war outside. But when he speaks again, she finds herself surprised. 

“How old are you?”

Her lips pop open genuinely. The idea that his first concern is for her wasn’t something she had anticipated in her grand plan, but it matters little. 

“I don’t know,” she says and means it. “I’m an orphan… I think seven or eight?” 

He frowns at this and she feels a bizarre shift of power, like he thinks he’s about to take charge of their situation and it almost makes her laugh. 

“How old are you?” she asks instead. 

“Thirteen.”

“And you’re a ninja?”

His hand rises to his missing eye again as he nods, moving his attention to the mouth of the cave at her back. “Do you know where we are?”

She shakes her head carefully. “I’m--” she pauses, faltering in her lies she’s mentally prepared, but she can’t stop now. She’s already started. “I’m looking for Konoha. I’m supposed to have a… a brother there.”

_ This better work. _

She’s not sure whether the thought belongs to her or Kurama. 

“A brother?” He flickers his eyes back to her. “What’s his name?”

She swallows. 

It’s now or never.

“I don’t know… but my family name is Namikaze.”

Obito freezes in place and she holds her breath, taking in little details about him. His breathing is normal, not strained, and while there are still a few stray marks of leftover scars on his jaw that she can see in the moonlight, he seems otherwise healthy. His clothes are in no better shape than hers, but his hitae-ate is lost back at the cave in. 

“I’ll get us back,” he says finally, pushing himself up to his feet the best he can in the shallow cave. She flares out her senses while he makes for the opening, making sure there are no nearby shinobi to threaten his first moments back in the land of the living. Her adrenaline pounds through her in a low beat as she watches him stretch to full height outside and scan their surroundings. He turns back to her, dipping down with a hand against the rock. “I know where we are. Are you okay to travel?”

“Are you?” she answers automatically, crawling toward him even as she says it. 

He clenches his teeth, but reaches out a hand into the cave. “I’m well enough to get us back to Konoha. If we leave now we’ll be there by first light.”

Tentatively, she takes his hand, feeling the awkwardness of how much smaller hers is in comparison while knowing that her true body would have been much bigger, stronger. 

They walk. Obito doesn’t let go of her hand for a long time, even offering to carry her on his back a few times and when she can finally sense the last leg of their journey, she relents. It’s not quite first light when the anbu team makes contact with them, rather an hour or two later into the morning. Obito’s hands tighten on her legs and she wraps her arms around his neck instinctively as he states his name, rank, and shinobi identification number as quickly as possible. 

She’s not surprised when they’re escorted to the hospital, but she is surprised they don’t make a fuss over letting her pass through the gates or when Obito demands they be kept in the same room together. The medics scour them both from top to bottom in a flurry of movement, extra attention given to his missing eye and her careful cleaning of all the blood dried onto her young, thin skin. 

When they’re left alone, Obito turns to her from his white linen bed, identical to her own. 

“I won’t leave you, okay?” he says suddenly and she can only nod. A small smile pulls up at the corner of his mouth. “My name is Uchiha Obito.” 

The name twists in her gut.  _ This  _ is the boy whose pain turned to rot so severe he started a war that killed everyone she loves. It’s so… wrong. 

It aches in her chest. 

Not two hours later, their door is thrown open and three figures stand frozen in the entryway. The girl is the first to burst forward, tears already streaming down her face, and even if Obito hadn’t gasped her name as she fell into him, Naru could have guessed her name was Rin. But her attention is lasered onto the men she left behind. 

_ Sensei _ . 

He’s so… small. 

And the wound that opens in the depths of her heart at the sight of her father turns her vision to gloss. She blinks the emotion away, chewing on her lip. Kakashi’s focus is glued to Obito as much as his feet are glued to the floor. 

“How?” Rin chokes on her sob. “How did you make it back? How are you okay? I’m-- I’m so sorry.”

Obito clings to her, his shoulders shaking in Naru’s peripherals and she knows he’s crying too. “I don’t know… I woke up in a cave… With Naru-chan… And we-we walked back. I don’t know what happened.”

“Naru-chan?”

The sound of Minato’s voice seizes Naru’s throat and when his eyes land on her, she has to stop herself from giving into the emotional atmosphere of the room. She’s not  _ actually  _ eight, or whatever, so she shouldn’t be reacting so strongly… but it’s been a long few weeks all along in another time period in an unfamiliar body and to see her  _ dad _ . 

She doesn’t trust herself to talk. 

But Obito pulls back from Rin long enough to look back at her with heavy eyes that tell her she’s not hiding her emotions as well as she wants to be. Rin brushes away her tears and leans back from Obito’s bed, giving him room as he seems to let the moment build before looking back at his sensei. 

“This is Namikaze Naru,” he says, ignoring the shot sent out through the room. “She’s an orphan who found me in a cave on her way to Konoha looking for a brother.”

“ _ Sensei, _ ” Rin whispers through a breath, cutting a glance back to him, while Naru hasn’t once taken her eyes off him. 

A long pause thickens between them all before Obito, apparently, loses his patience. 

“C’mon, Sensei!” he almost shouts. “Look at her! You look identical!” 

She feels the impending questions before they come and her mind races for an explanation. He’s going to want to know where she came from, who raised her so far, how she made it to Konoha. They’re answers she doesn’t have and with her father staring at her like he is, it’s hard to make any sort of reliable excuse.

And despite Madara, despite the Akatsuki and Danzo and everything else she should be worrying about… a part of her just wants to reach out and touch him.  _ Hug  _ him. Just… exist in a world alongside him and the waves of grief crash into her so fiercely, the tears break from her eyes before she can regain control over herself. 

_ Fuck _ , she might as well be eight. 

“Oh! Oh, no no,” Rin says quietly, shuffling around Obito’s bedside to come to hers. Naru fists her blanket in her lap as Rin wipes the tears from her cheeks with both hands. “It’s okay. We’ll get it all figured out, alright? Team Minato will take care of you, Naru-chan!”

She doesn’t know how to tell them that’s exactly what she’s afraid of. 


End file.
